Orphan Pirates of the Spanish Main Read Free Page B

few days apart.
    After dinner, Mom had us take off our shoes and told us to walk out in the middle of the sand painting, me and Ollie both, but Ollie refused. Mom got pretty upset. Couldn’t he do this one small thing for her? What did it matter why? While they continued to argue, I walked out into the middle of it like she asked, messing up the perfectly precise design as little as possible. It was sort of Navajo, I guess, with these long spindly guys standing like a chorus line, but their eyes were big almond eyes, and they had multi-colored angel wings. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.
    She had me sit in the middle of it at the feet of the spindly-legged angels, while Ollie wouldn’t shut up about how stupid it was to make something like this and then just screw it up, that she needed help, that there were therapies, new drugs and treatments, but Mom ignored him and spoke to only me if he wouldn’t listen, as if he weren’t there: “Don’t let them change you. Don’t let them define you. Don’t let them diminish the things you love. They don’t mean to, but they will if you let them.” She said some other things on the same theme I don’t remember exactly. Ollie never listened. For years I wondered who “they” were. I’ve come to realize she meant humans.
    Dad called us inside for dessert while Mom vacuumed up the sand painting with a Shop-Vac.
    A week later they were gone, plunged into the abyss, an obscure site in New Mexico Mom just had to see. They had been planning this trip even longer than she’d been collecting grains of sand. Some say they didn’t die, that they were headed home. I guess I’m one.
    I stare at the postcard now. It’s the sand painting on the garage floor. She took a bunch of photos of it with a camera mounted on the garage ceiling before the big fight with Ollie. I’m trying to imagine how and why it’s now, impossibly, a postcard in my hands. “How come I didn’t get one?”
    â€œCause you stepped into the sand painting, and I didn’t. That’s why you’ve healed, and I haven’t. I did some research. That’s what they’re for. Healing. Mom was trying to heal us. That’s why I’ve lost my sense of smell.”
    I don’t see the last connection, but I let it pass. He’s actually taking something unusual Mom and Dad did seriously, for once, instead of seeing it as further evidence they were crazy. I don’t ask why, if I’m all healed—whatever he thinks that means—he needs me to tag along on this foolish journey, because I already know. He would feel too ridiculous otherwise. I’m the one who supposedly believes in this wacky alien shit. I’m the one who should be getting spooky postcards in the mail, not him. He needs his little brother along to boost his confidence that he hasn’t totally lost his mind. Late-onset schizophrenia is just one of many judgments out there for an old man who starts talking crazy, but you can always tell your little brother, right? He won’t rat you out.
    *   *   *
    I tell Katyana Ollie wants me to go out to the abyss with him, and she immediately says I should because he’s my brother, “and how many things has he ever asked you to do for him?” Katyana’s big on family loyalty. But then I get to the part about the postcard, and she stops me. “Let me see it.”
    She looks it over front and back, shaking her head. I think she might cry. “I have to go with you,” she says.
    â€œYou’ve seen this before?”
    â€œIt’s one of Daddy’s alien artifacts. Look at the handwriting.”
    â€œI did. It’s my mom’s.”
    â€œNot the message. Your brother’s address. It’s Daddy’s handwriting.”
    I’d completely missed it. The mailing address is even a different color ink. The lettering,